When I was first diagnosed with cervical cancer in March 2012, I got treated near my home in southern Louisiana. It wasn’t because I didn’t want to go to MD Anderson — I actually did. I even asked my gynecologist why she wasn’t sending me there. She said that because what I had wasn’t rare or weird, she felt confident we could handle it locally.

My kids were still really little back then — just 4 and 1. So, even though MD Anderson...